Basking In The Trivial

Our New Obsession: A Crime A Day

The entrance to Alderson Federal Prison Camp, where you might end up if you run afoul of one of the many laws tweeted by CrimeADay. Photo by Christopher Ziemnowicz Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.

Back in 2011, the Wall Street Journal stdh at how impossible it seemed to count the total number of federal criminal laws in existence. The Justice Department tried, and failed. But now there’s a twitter account seeking to do the same thing, and it’s totally fascinating.

Retired Justice Department official Ronald Gainer headed up the DOJ’s abortive count back in 1982, saying that they started the tally “for the express purpose of exposing the idiocy” of the system. After two years, however, the idiocy won, and the DOJ gave up after counting only 3,000 criminal offenses. That’s the last time anyone tried such a census.

Until now, perhaps? The CrimeADay twitter account (which you should totally follow!) seeks to do a similar count, by tweeting a federal statute every day. Here are some of my recent favorites:

18 U.S.C. §1865 & 36 C.F.R. §2.20 make it a federal crime to roller skate in a national park if not in a designated roller skating area.

But it’s still a worthy endeavor: as law prof John Baker told the WSJ, “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.” By following CrimeADay, the indictment you avoid may be your own! That is, if you keep those chicken sex glands out of your hot dogs.